Comcast Supports Net Neutrality on the Internet Day of Action

By David L. Cohen
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Jul 12, 2017

We wanted to reinforce today – to the public, our customers, regulators, and legislators -- what we’ve been saying and doing for years. We support permanent, strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules. We don’t and won’t block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content. We also believe in full transparency; you’ll know what our customer policies are.

Our business practices ensure full protections for our customers and the public, and will continue to do so no matter which direction the FCC ultimately decides to go with its Open Internet regulations. The scare tactics being pursued by some groups that ISPs like Comcast will block or throttle lawful content are simply untrue.

You can have strong and enforceable Open Internet protections without relying on rigid, innovation-killing utility regulation that was developed in the 1930s (Title II). While some seem to want to create hysteria that the Internet as we know it will disappear if their preferred regulatory scheme isn’t in place, that’s just not reality.

The Internet was fine before Title II regulation, and American companies invested $1.5 trillion in broadband infrastructure and enabled the creation of trillions of dollars of value in Internet companies that have become the globe’s largest and most innovative. Between 2005 and 2015 when the Internet wasn’t regulated under Title II, it grew at a tremendous pace – from 50 million fixed and mobile connections to over 355 million. The percent of Internet connections greater than 10 Mbps went from around 5% to almost 80%. Streaming video customers went from almost zero to almost 90 million. And, all without regulations designed for the monopoly telephone companies almost a century ago.

We’ll be filing comments at the FCC next week with a lot of detail on how net neutrality rules can continue to survive without the FCC using ill-suited and outdated regulations, but ultimately, we believe the best way to end the game of regulatory ping pong that has been played in the net neutrality space for the past decade, would be for Congress to act and give clear legal authority and legislative direction. In the end, bipartisan legislation is the best course to pursue – putting in place strong, permanent, and legally enforceable net neutrality rules that fully protect consumers, while fostering growth, investment, innovation, and deployment of broadband to all Americans.